>At 7:47 AM -0500 11/23/98, Paul F. Evans wrote:
>> List,
>>
>> Help me out here. I am really afraid to ask this question for fear
>of
>> striking up a re-ignition of the great aspect discussion of '96!
>> However, I am interested in an opinion.
>>
>> In taking basic first year Greek I was told that the aorist was a
>> punctilliar (spelled correctly?) tense signifying past action
>completed
>> in the past. However, after many years of NT study (I should know
>more),
>> I have come across many grammars that bill the aorist as the generic
>
>> tense which says nothing particular about the action it describes.
>The
>> theory seems to be that if the writer wished to say something
>special
>> about the action of a verb he would choose a tense other than the
>aorist.
>> Obviously I have discovered that the aorist is only a past tense in
>the
>> indicative or imperative moods. If the aorist is a a punctilliar
>tense,
>> describing past completed action, it would be little different from
>the
>> prefect, because obviously done is done and the results would
>persist.
>>
>> My question is whether the aorist is a sort of generic tense which
>> describes nothing special about the action of the verb, and whether
>it is
>> true that a writer would choose another tense when he wanted to
>specify
>> something specific in that sense.
>>
>> If this is a dumb question forgive me! Only, I come across a
>> significant body of literature that makes much about the use of the
>
>> aorist for its theology and others who discount such (I am
>interested
>> only in discussing the nature of the aorist here).

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